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Nieuw Amsterdam January 2012

Sail Date:
January 2012

Destination:
Eastern Caribbean

Embarkation:
Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades)

We embarked the ship on 01/08/2012 after visited Orlando Universal on 01/06/2012. Drove back to Fort Lauderdale on 01/07 and stayed at Hyatt Place North for a night. We used the shuttle offered by the hotel ($7.00 a person). Embarking is a breeze and we're on the ship by 11:30am. She is a beauty and easy to navigate even for a rookie like me. This is our first cruise with HAL, so I decided to book two inside cabins on deck 1. It was a quite spacious room but we're rarely in our stateroom.

The ship is very clean but saw sign of wear and tear. I love the wraparound deck on deck 3 Promenade deck. I can easily find a lounge chair anytime on any deck. Most of the passengers are mature citizens and saw some kids on board.

The staffs are friendly, polite and helpful. Our room steward and his assistant did very good job. We did "As you wish" dining and worked very well for us. We ate at main dining room (Manhattan Dining Room) for 3 nights and Canaletto Restaurant for 1 night More
and Lido for dinner. We ate at table 187 every night we ate at MDR because we received great service by wait staff.The ports of call are Grand Turk, San Juan, St Maarten and Half Moon Cay. I loved to visit HMC (who doesn't)! But I wish we went to HMC first instead of last port of call. MY DW and I had to clean up the sand and pack our wet swimming trunks and sandals on the last night.

I didn't see any shows but my kids saw a few shows and they like the German juggler. We watch NFL playoff and BCS final games on big screen TV in one of the lounges. I enjoyed the Adagio string group.

Debarking was chaotic and very disorderly. They're running late and many folks wanted to get off same time. We use HAL's "Land and Sea Excursion" and it was very informative and our guide Linva (it's not typo) from Wales was wonderful. Less